Lubuntu Will Stop Providing 32-Bit Releases - Starting With 19.04

The Lubuntu developers have announced today that their LXDE/LXQt downstream of Ubuntu Linux will no longer be offering 32-bit x86 releases moving forward while Lubuntu 18.04 LTS will continue to be supported.

Earlier this month Xubuntu announced that their Xfce spin would stop offering 32-bit ISOs for future releases. That left Lubuntu as the last of major Ubuntu derivatives providing 32-bit ISOs. But now the team announced today they too are parting ways with 32-bit releases.

Simon Quigley announced today:

As an increasing number of Linux distributions have focused their attention on the 64-bit x86 architecture (amd64) and not on i386, we have found that it is harder to support than it once was. With i386-only machines becoming an artifact of the past, it has become increasingly clear to the Lubuntu Team that we need to evaluate its removal from the architectures we support. After careful consideration, we regret to inform our users that Lubuntu 19.04 and future versions will not see a release for the i386 architecture. Please do note that we will continue to support Lubuntu 18.04 LTS i386 users as a first-class citizen until its End of Life date in April of 2021.

So for those still running on antiquated x86 32-bit systems, *buntu 18.04 LTS is pretty much the end of the road for new ISO releases on this popular Debian-based distribution. Ubuntu though will continue maintaining i686 packages in its archive for use with 32-bit software like Steam and select other applications not living in a x86_64 world.